


The 27 Rules of Lacey French

by Shadowed_Oracle



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cursed Storybrooke, F/M, Past Abuse, Probable angst, season 1 AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 07:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18311279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowed_Oracle/pseuds/Shadowed_Oracle
Summary: Lacey French used to have many rules, now she has just the one: no falling in love. Less than a week away from getting married her thoughts are filled with not with her fiancé but the enigmatic Mr. Gold who is the only one who can help clear the fog around her mind.Cursed Storybrooke AU. Mostly is a Season 1 AU (probably).





	The 27 Rules of Lacey French

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter was written for A Monthly Rumbelling prompt: "One rule: no falling in love".

Lacey French poured another couple of beers, slid them along the bar and closed her eyes. She pressed her left fist into the small of her back and let out a tiny, almost inaudible groan. She’d known these shoes were a bad idea the moment she put them on before her shift. Once she would have worn them with great ease for hours more. But now? She’d barely made it halfway through her shift and her feet were already killing her.

For a moment she wished she hadn’t wanted to look good for this shift. Hell, she wished she hadn’t agreed to this shift in the first place. But she always worked this late shift on the first day of the month. And she always looked good for it. It was almost like a rule of hers. Almost.

Lacey French didn’t have a lot of rules in life. At least not any more. Once she’d had a lot, 27 to be exact. But now she had just one rule: no falling in love. She’d burned through all the rest long since including the other two she’d sworn blind to follow: Leave Storybrooke as soon as you can and don’t marry a guy just because he knocked you up. Technically she supposed she hadn’t married Jake yet, but she was 6 months pregnant with his child and the wedding was in less than a week. So she’d near enough broken that one too to have already abandoned it. No, now she only had that last rule to cling to.

The 27 rules had been relics of her childhood. All her mother’s or adapted from her mother’s 27 Rules. Karen French had perhaps had more that that, but her ten year old self had recorded 27 in her diary just months before her mother had died so 27 was the number she’d stuck with.

Karen French’s most important rule, “Never break a promise”, had eventually cost her mother her life. There was no promise Lacey wouldn’t break to avoid that happening to her.

She shivered. Thoughts like this never led her to a good place. Recalling her mother’s death never led her anywhere but the bottom of a bottle and since she couldn’t drink any of the liquor from the bar she was tending at The Rabbit Hole any more she had to find something to distract herself with.

She glanced at the bar’s patrons desperate for a way to avoid falling into this void again but her eyes were drawn to Jake and she fell back into that pit again. Her mind filled with images of her mother’s drawn face in her final days. The bruises along her body that so perfectly matched Moe - fucking did not deserve a familial title - French’s hands.

Lacey felt goosebumps appear along her skin and a tell-tale nausea swept over her, made worse by the stink of the alcohol and food the bar served. She closed her eyes again and breathed slowly, in and out, while images of Moe French dead in a ditch somewhere calmed her down. She hadn’t seen or spoken to her him in over a decade and she hoped never to see him again or so help her, she did not know what she would do.

Lacey had sworn never to become her mother and that had meant changing some of the rules. Lacey’s number one, now only, rule came from one of her mother’s odder maxims: “Don’t fall in love with someone who likes onion rings.” Lacey had never understood her mother’s extreme position against onion rings so had changed it. She knew what love could do, she had watched it destroy her mother before her death. She loved her mother, but she hated that her blindness towards Moe French’s nature and actions had cost her her life. No, Lacey would not make the same mistakes as her mother by falling in love. Not falling in love could save her from Karen French’s fate.

Or so Lacey had once thought. Now she wasn’t so sure. Now she was older and less naïve she thought perhaps otherwise: a drunken one-night stand could be as deadly as falling in love. Lacey couldn’t even recall the most night in question she’d been so blindingly drunk, just snippets here and there. She couldn’t even recall exactly when it was if she was honest. It felt a long time ago, longer than six months if she was honest. When she tried to recall any pertinent information it all slid away from her in a fuzzy blur.

Her gaze moved across the bar to Jake. They were to be married in a week and she didn’t know why. He didn’t have any fond feelings for her or the baby. Perhaps if she’d realized she was pregnant before her first trimester was over it would have been the free sex on tap.

But her periods were irregular anyway and she hasn’t been paying attention and it had taken until she was nearly five months along for her to realize she was pregnant and another couple of weeks to work out that she was keeping it and work up her courage to tell Jake. By that time her stomach had begun to expand and Jake wouldn’t go near her in that way with her baby bump, which relieved her if she was honest with herself.

She didn’t know why the Jake had offered to marry her and she didn’t know the hell why she’d accepted when she thought about it clearly. She wasn’t sure her child would be better off with the likes of Jake around. A part of her had thought that the security would be good for her, and it. After all Jake’s job at the cannery wasn’t much but between them that was a more stable income than the single income of a barmaid. She guessed that was a good enough reason. But right now when the fog around her mind cleared a bit, she wondered if she was in fact wrong.

She stared at Jake flirting with her friend, and ex, Ruby near the pool tables. She wondered how much she’d care if he went home with her. Her month quirked up slightly, not that that was likely. Ruby was pretty picky about the men she chose. She doubted Jake would meet up to Ruby’s exacting standards. Plus Rubes wouldn’t take home her fiancé.

For a moment she felt a tinge of regret and wondered if she would feel more enthusiastic about marriage if she were instead engaged to Ruby. They hadn’t worked as a couple but at least she could remember the good times they’d had together. Ruby was as close as she’d come to loving anyone since her mother had died and her inability to love her (or in Ruby’s words "allow herself" to love her) was the reason they’d split up. Still she’d have known her child would be loved and cared for beyond all measure. But it wasn't Ruby or Jake she had dreamt of marrying last night...

“Oi, service her love.” She shook her head to clear away the tantalizing and confusing thoughts of an alternate past and future was almost glad of the of the interruption. Almost.

She scowled at Keith, one of the regulars, who was making no attempt to mask the fact he was staring down her top. “My face is up here.”

He grinned and tsked, “That’s no way to treat your favourite customer.”

“You’re not my favourite customer.” She said flatly, her eyes unconsciously sliding to the man at the end of the bar nursing a glass of The Rabbit Hole’s finest whiskey.

Mr Gold.

The local Pawnbroker and landlord to most of the town and subject of her romantic, verging on erotic, dreams last night. He was the reason she always worked the first of the month and the reason why she was dressed as provocatively as she could right now. He had a reputation as a monster around town but he’d always been good to her.

She enjoyed flirting with Mr Gold; it was safe and easy. He knew the score and let her flirt away and tipped her generously in response. Those tips had been her rainy day fund to leave her life and move away from Storybrooke. But some emergency had always happened and she never did move and now was likely never to. Unless Jake suddenly developed an interest in seeing the world. Which was un-fucking-likely.

Lacey quickly filled Keith’s order with asking what he was having (it wasn’t like it ever changed from the cheapest beer they offered) and focused on the man at the end of the bar. Sometimes it felt like Mr. Gold was an oasis in the desert of her life. The one person that could make her think clearly.

She wasn’t sure why seeing him drew the fog away from her mind. Why something so simple as flirting with him felt right in a way in never did with anyone else.

Maybe it was his immaculate presentation, she thought. His perfectly tailored suits, those crisply folded pocket squares and the shoulder length hair brown hair that should have should have ruined the presentation but somehow just enhanced his appearance.

That must be it: simple attraction to a man who could and would never be hers. He was sophisticated and elegant and must be nearly double her age. She was just the dumb slut who got herself knocked up from a drunken one night stand and didn’t realize until she was five fucking months along. What could he ever see in her? No he just flirted back out of politeness. For whatever reason he wasn’t a monster with her it wasn’t attraction.

He was so perfectly dressed that she wanted to look her best around him, even if she could never compare. Especially not when she felt so fat and bloated from this damn pregnancy. She hadn’t noticed a reduction in her tips -- yet. But she hadn’t been showing this much before. She’d dressed carefully today but even so she couldn’t compare to him.

She leaned against the side counter nearest the door and smiled at him. She shifted her weight towards her elbows and smiled her best sultry smile at him as she displayed the one feature her pregnancy had improved: her cleavage. In her opinion she had gone from barely adequate that department to voluptuous and she intended to make full advantage of it. For all his aloof and gruff demeanour Mr. Gold was still a man. He would not be immune to her feminine wiles if she played them right. But to do that she had to casually, not crassly show off her new best asset or rather: assets.

She batted her eyelashes slightly at him. “Can I get you a refill Mr. Gold?” She asked in her best deep and husky voice leaning forward even more to display her cleavage at the best angle her maternity bra and low cut sleeveless blue top offered.

He shook his head at her, “Just the rent please, Lacey.” He seemed distracted this evening not even really looking at her, his eyes trained somewhere over her head. She glanced back but saw nothing of interest behind her.

She straightened and bit her lip slightly. Of all the men in the bar tonight he was the only one she wanted to really look at her. Not just look at her to engage her in conversation and clear the fog from her from her mind for just a few moments. But how could she do that if he was so taciturn and he didn’t even look at her.

She knew she wasn’t much to look at these days. She had a mirror. Plus Jake had kindly pointed out to her last night she was getting fat and unattractive, just in case her eyes had stopped working. But of all the things that her pregnancy was causing to swell to twice their normal size, her breasts were the only ones that actually improved. She’d been receiving bigger tips all evening from men along the bar. But none were as large as the ones that Mr. Gold could provide.

Her hand shook slightly as she removed the envelope with the rent money from the bottom of the till. She needed that tip. Pregnancies weren’t cheap and since Jake was likely to drink away most of his overtime money she needed a little nest egg for the baby. She’d been flirting with Mr. Gold and getting a tidy little sum of money each month as a bonus for as long as she could remember, for decades it seemed. Which had to be her condition messing with her mind. She was 28, she’d been working her since she was 19 which wasn’t a full decade. And she could remember her childhood. It was seared into her brain. But that all seemed so long ago that at that moment she felt far older than 28 and if anyone had asked her there and then, she wasn’t sure she could have told them how old she was.

She closed her eyes again and breathed carefully for a minute before sauntering over to Mr. Gold. He seemed lost in thought tonight, not scowling at the patrons and terrorizing them about overdue rent payments or threatening to up their rent for breathing too loudly. Perhaps it wasn’t her. But that didn’t solve her tip issue.

She bent forward, trying to get her chest as near to his line of sight as she could, as she handed him the rent. “Dave assures me it’s all here.”

He looked up and definitely caught a view of her chest as his eyes widened before quickly focusing on her left ear. He swallowed audibly before composing himself to respond in a sardonic tone of voice that was barely a whisper. “Well, we’ll just see about that.”

She bit her cheek to stop herself from grinning, he’d definitely been affected by her display even if he hadn’t been in the mood to flirt back.

He finished his count quickly and tossed some bills on the bar nodding sniffly to her as picked up his cane and left the bar.

She looked down at the money he’d left and let herself grin. A $50 tip on a single glass of whiskey? Job well done.

She knelt behind the bar and shoved the tip down her bra (somewhere Jake would never think to look). She patted her stomach lightly. “Might be able to afford to send you to college, little one, if he continues to tip like that.”

She straightened looking at the humming bar and sighed as her feet throbbed in a reminder they were going to kill her before the night was through. She just wanted to head home and enjoy one of her last night’s to herself in well, forever.

Now Mr. Gold had gone the fog and fully settled again and she felt a numbness overtake her at the thought of the rest of the evening, her upcoming nuptials and the rest of her damn life.

**Author's Note:**

> If you spot any typos/ grammatical errors please let me know. 
> 
> Also, fair warning, I'm quite busy with various things right now so updates may be slow. I'm hoping to get some more chapters of this written during Camp NaNoWriMo though.


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